Category Archives: Behavior

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Friday was one of those mornings at our house. Caroline couldn’t find shorts, Sam wanted me to play balloon-bounce with him, the dog was in the kitchen stealing bagels every time I left the room, and Scott and I just wanted caffeine. But school needed notes about the field trip (yes, we could drive; we were both coming; we could carry three including our own; and we would buy popcorn for all seventy five or so would-be bowlers so Sam would have a snack), we had to put a cooler out for the co-op, and Caroline snacked on half the things we meant to send in her lunch. … Read the rest

My kids’ Christmas party was yesterday. It’s the first time I’ve been to their school since the Sandy Hook tragedy. In the lobby, one mother asked if the front desk could have a panic button installed, just in case. The secretary, whose son also attends the school, agreed it would be a good idea. I’m not typically given to worry about the grand scheme. You want small scale frets? I have them in plenty. Conspiracy theories? I’m your woman. But the big stuff doesn’t usually bother me.

This does.

My kids were with me on Friday, December 14. It was my birthday, and the opening night of the Nutcracker, in which they both performed.… Read the rest

“Sam, get back in this house right now. We do not go outdoors naked.” I stagger-stuffed my legs into jeans as I pelted out onto the back patio. “Jesus Christ it’s cold.” I turned around and went back for something to put on my feet.

“Told you.” Scott was lacing up his own shoes.

We went back out together. Sam poked his penis through the tree house slats and shook it at us. “Wanker!”

“Oh God, I thought the ‘wanker’ phase was over.” I stalked to the base of the tree. “You’re going to get splinters if you keep that there.”

The toilet bubbled brown, its contents unshifted by two days of intermittent plunging. Scott aimed his snake and cranked the handle. I stood by on flood detail. A rattle and a grunt. “That’s it.” He kept twisting. Nothing happened. He shook his head and began extruding the snake. I returned the mop to the laundry room. Visions of an epic plumber’s bill scrambled through my brain. But then, “Damn it, Sam!”

“You got it!?”

“It stuck on the end of the snake.”

Scott carried out the impaled, pink tentacled squishy ball. I threw it away. “Caroline’s going to be pissed.”

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“Are we getting closer” took me back to an indent in flushing, though Scott’s big line, “I think I’m getting closer, I can feel the damned thing,” was lost in revision.… Read the rest

If you’re not familiar with Sam’s story, start with Sam Part I and Sam Part II. Then, if you’d like a happy little interlude, try out Beauty and the Beast. Although the story below will make sense without the background, the background will help. A lot.

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I just took some chocolate chip cookies to the neighbor’s house. Normally, I do that to express sympathy. I eat for comfort. Surely you do, as well. But today, I was saying, “Thank you.” We barely know these neighbors, a married couple with teen kids. In the three years we’ve lived here, we’ve exchanged maybe thirty words.… Read the rest

The super moon has turned Sam into a super monster. Seriously. He’s been on a rampage today. He isn’t normally all that talkative, but today? It’s been nonstop words. We took him to the zoo this morning, and I swear to God he woke up every snake in the reptile house bellowing “HERE I AM,” as he ran in the door.

When we got home, we tried to slow things down with a viewing of Wall-E. Scott and I enjoyed the movie. What little we saw of it between “hug attacks” and “What’s that?” bombardment. (NB: This is a kid who can follow Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen so I know he’s full of piss and vinegar when he claims to be unclear about a Pixar plot.… Read the rest

Sam had an epic meltdown last night and another one this morning. Two for one special down at Scream Mart or something I guess. I don’t know.

There’s an art to finessing these things so we don’t feed into them while still trying to force the little monster to gain some control. I don’t honestly remember what set him off either time, and once he’s in the heat of one, it doesn’t really matter.

If he were older, just a little older, I could comfortably put him in his room and, barring his own ability to confine himself to its four walls, lock the door and leave.… Read the rest

I swear to GOD my four year old can’t read. So I KNOW he didn’t see your blog entry about The Professor’s laundry today. Besides, he was in school. And he was still in school when my husband and I were talking to each other and saying it was exactly the kind of thing he might try, nevermind that your professor is five years his senior.

Nonetheless, we seem to have jinxed ourselves.

We put Sam to bed at 8, and he was back to annoy us at 8:15, 9:15, and 9:30. When things quieted down thereafter, we hoped it meant he’d finally gone to sleep.… Read the rest

Well folks, it worked. Or anyway, it sorta worked. There were kinks, and things got hinky there when Sam realized we were really taking his bed away, but our two little sugarplums are nestled right now in their big new beds.

Things got off to a rough start, because the shape of our house made it impossible to drag the beds in ahead of time, meaning we had to plan to deliver them as a middle-of-the-day-work-in-progress surprise. Only when we woke up, it was shiver in my bones pouring rain. Queue Ten Thousand Maniacs. Scott checked the radar, identified a brief hole when we could drag everything in from the shed, and as soon as the predicted letup began, we raced inside with a thousand parts.… Read the rest